It was an epic fail. I started out with a little nausea, and progressed to every possible problem of the digestive system. Each night I would take it and would start having symptoms about 30 minutes later. After 5-6 hours I would start improving. This got worse every night until the 6th night I got so dehydrated that I started having a lot of confusion (symptom of dehydration) and could not figure out what I should be doing to treat the dehydration. By about 2 am I was thinking I was dying. Then it started wearing off and I figured out I should start drinking the baby’s Pedialyte. That was a big improvement.
The next morning I called my oncologist and told the nurse my sad, sorry story in much greater detail than I will tell it here (be glad!) and they decided that I should go back on Gleevec. If someone had told me over the last five years of horrible Gleevec side effects that one day I would be grateful to have them back I would have laughed my head off. But here I am. Very, very glad that Gleevec is still an option for me.
On the other hand, I got 2 days off of both of them to “recover” and that was wonderful. But even a week off of Gleevec means your body has to adapt again, though fortunately not as much as the first time I started it.
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